Everything you could ask for in a daughter
PAIGE DOHERTY’S MUM SPEAKS ABOUT ANNIVERSARY OF SCHOOLGIRL MURDER
SCHOOLGIRL Paige Doherty was “everything you would ask for” in a daughter, her devastated mother said ahead of the one-year anniversary of her death.
The 15-year-old was brutally killed by twisted deli shop owner John Leathem, 32, on March 19 last year.
She was stabbed more than 60 times after visiting Delicious Deli in Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire, and suffered a horrifying 146 injuries before being disposed of in the woods next to a busy road.
Paige’s grief-stricken family are still attempting to come to terms with the loss of their “angel” but are now determined to focus on the positives by remembering all the good she brought to the world.
Mum Pamela Munro, 33, said her daughter’s first instincts were always to look out for others and particularly making her life easier by helping with siblings Andrew, 11, Peyton, five, and Lucas, one.
Pamela said: “You would come in and she would be mopping the floor or she would have a candlelit bath ran for you.
“She was a great big sister. I remember her telling her teacher that ‘Andrew Jnr wears a size four nappy’ and her teacher saying ‘ how do you know that Paige?’
“Andrew Snr (Pamela’s partner) has said ‘you don’t actually realise how much she did for us. How much she helped us.’
“I used to say if anything happened to me and Andrew my kids would be fine because she would take them. She was everything you could ask for in a daughter.”
Even as a child Paige would offer to help her mum make a bottle or bathe her younger siblings.
In her final days she had requested a blue jacket be put in holding at a New Look store in Glasgow so that she could surprise her mum with it as a gift once her wages came in.
Her mum did not find out about that attempt at a good deed until months after Paige passed away.
By that point the jacket was already sold but the impact of the gesture lingered longer than any jacket could. Pamela said: “That’s just the kind of thing she did.
“She would always want to pay. She would buy everybody something with her wages.
Pamela gave birth to Paige when she was only 17 and, as a result of their similar personalities and proximity in age, grew to be best friends.
Paige had aspirations to become a doctor once her hard school work would pay off.
The clever teenager had a backup career as a hairdresser lined up at the salon where she worked part-time.
Her mum added: “Most people her age don’t want to go out and work – I wouldn’t have expected that from her, but she wanted to.”
The family are in the process of setting up a charity in her honour, called Paige’s Promise, which will teach youngsters selfdefence and offer grief counselling to those who lose loved ones in traumatic circumstances.
And Pamela now focuses a lot on Paige’s Law – a campaign seeking tougher sentences and more room for victim’s rights in the legal system. This campaign comes after her sick killer was granted his appeal for a reduced sentence.
Pamela hopes others will remember her daughter in the same way that Paige would want.
She added: “She would be saying to everybody ‘don’t dwell on this, don’t be sitting sad and being upset, don’t put off your life.’
“She’d say ‘just forget about the person that did this, make more time for family and don’t argue – life is far too short.’”